Op NDPR bespreekt Steven Nadler het boek van Wiep van Bunge, Spinoza Past and Present: Essays on Spinoza, Spinozism, and Spinoza Scholarship, Brill, 2012.
[books.google]
Hij is er wel over te spreken. “It is an eclectic volume, not in terms of quality, since they all [the essays] represent the high standard of scholarship that we expect from Van Bunge, but in terms of subject matter. The essays are thematically very diverse, and they range over philosophical, historical, historiographical, literary, and political topics.” […] “He does a wonderful job of criticizing the "marrano hypothesis" promoted by Yovel, among others.”
Maar Nadler is het niet met Van Bunge eens dat Spinoza's joodse achtergrond niet van belang zou zijn om zijn denken te begrijpen. “This is not to say that Spinoza is, as Van Bunge dismissively puts it, "an essentially Jewish thinker," or that Spinoza "remained at heart a Jewish thinker," but rather simply to take account of an intellectual tradition that was a critical part of Spinoza's education and philosophical development.”
